


An Illusion Of Immortality

by FeathersMcStrange



Category: CSI: Miami
Genre: Briefly also features Calleigh Duquesne and Tim Speedle, Death, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 08:30:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7094365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeathersMcStrange/pseuds/FeathersMcStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you work with death too long, it becomes something that happens to other people. It's a daily reality but it can't happen to someone you know. Until Tim Speedle goes down, and it's this reminder that anyone could go at any moment that makes Eric Delko decide he has to hate Ryan Wolfe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Illusion Of Immortality

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a series of drabbles based off a prompt list on tumblr found here: http://aromanticgcallen.tumblr.com/post/144666238426/obscure-feelings-drabble-prompt-meme, characters assigned by my lovely friend V
> 
> Prompt: Mauerbauertraurigkeit
> 
> Character(s): Eric Delko
> 
> See note at bottom for additional warnings.

> **MAUERBAUERTRAURIGKEIT:** The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.

People die. Of course they do. Everyone does, it's an unavoidable part of the human condition. Eric is more aware of this clause in the contract than he figures most are, given what he does every day. It's an interwoven part of Eric's life, it tangentially introduced him to most of the people he knows.

It's almost funny, how working with death every day can make a person feel almost invincible, like mortality is a thing that happens to other people. Maybe the most dangerous part of forensic work is how it defangs death, makes it something to be studied under a microscope, not considered as a real possibility, something that really could happen to you.

Or someone you care about.

The idea seems disturbingly laughable, that one of them could be down there on Alexx's table. Until Tim catches a piece of lead in his chest, shot trying to play the hero like he was Superman and bullets would bounce off him like so much confetti. 

They don't, and Tim is put in the ground on a Saturday. That's the day death becomes something Eric Delko fears.

On the day Eric meets Ryan Wolfe, he watches the man's death play out in his mind's eye and decides he hates him. There are enough people walking around this lab the weight of whose caskets Eric can already feel chafing his shoulder, and he is loathe to add another gravestone to the crowded cemetery in his imagination. It's enough to just barely be able to keep from snapping at Horatio to leave him alone, to tell Calleigh they can't be friends, to push out Natalia and Alexx, because all he sees when he looks at them are their autopsies. 

Ryan doesn't understand, looks hurt when Eric ices him out, but he doesn't understand that Eric can't be friends with him, to both of their advantage. It isn't until he's driving wildly down the street with the sirens blaring overhead and Ryan screaming in the passenger's seat that Eric realizes it's happened without his awareness or permission - Ryan matters to him.

"Is it worth it?" Eric demands of Calleigh later, when it's blown over but still weighs on Eric's mind. "How can we care about anybody after what happened to Speed, is it even worth it when we know we could lose them at any second?"

Calleigh answers immediately, without hesitation or pause. "Yes, Eric. It is."

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: referenced character death, oblique nonspecific reference to season 4 episode 'Nailed' and involved eye injury


End file.
